Jesus Christ - The (unadjusted) gospel

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Other Together for the Gospel Conference books:

Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology, 2009

Preaching the Cross, 2007

TOGETHER FOR THE GOSPEL

The (Unadjusted) Gospel

Mark Dever
J. Ligon Duncan III
R. Albert Mohler Jr.
C. J. Mahaney

Contributions by

Thabiti M. Anyabwile
John MacArthur
John Piper
R. C. Sproul

The Unadjusted Gospel

Copyright 2014 by Together for the Gospel

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Wahl Design, Matt Wahl

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible. Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995.
Used by permission.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3187-3
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3188-0
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3189-7
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3190-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The unadjusted gospel / Mark Dever, J. Ligon Duncan III, R. Albert Mohler Jr., and C. J. Mahaney ; contributions by Thabiti M. Anyabwile, John MacArthur, John Piper, and R. C. Sproul.

1 online resource. (Together for the Gospel)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3188-0 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-4335-3189-7 (mobi) ISBN 978-1-4335-3190-3 (epub) ISBN 978-1-4335-3187-3 (tp)

1. Christian life. 2. Jesus ChristPerson and offices.
I. Dever, Mark.

BV4501.3

248.4dc23

2014004554

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Contents

1. 1 The Church Is the Gospel Made Visible
   Mark Dever
2. 2 The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel
   R. C. Sproul
3. 3 How Does It Happen? Trajectories toward an Adjusted Gospel
   R. Albert Mohler Jr.
4. 4 Fine-Sounding Arguments: How Wrongly Engaging the Culture Adjusts the Gospel
   Thabiti Anyabwile
5. 5 Sowing Seed and Sleeping Well
   John MacArthur
6. 6 Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?
   John Piper
7. 7 Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?
   J. Ligon Duncan III
8. 8 Ordinary Pastors
   C. J. Mahaney

I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved...

1 Corinthians 15:12

Ligon Duncan

In the course of the churchs history, there have been times when God has called a minister of the gospel to minister alone for a season. One might think of the missionary and his wife who set foot among an unreached people for the very first time and spend years before seeing a convert. Praise God for the fortitude and perseverance of such saints.

More commonly, God in his grace has seen fit to have his ministers live and minister together for the gospel. And how heartening and sustaining this fellowship of ministers is! Indeed, does it not prepare us for those times when, by Gods strange providences, we are called to minister alone?

The Together for the Gospel Conference, first hosted in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky, grew out of my friendship with three other ministers of the gospel: Mark Dever, C. J. Mahaney, and Al Mohler. They remain dear friends and partners in the gospel to this day. All four of us are delighted to present you these chapters drawn from the third conference of Together for the Gospel, which was held in 2010, called The Unadjusted Gospel.

Four Observations and Two Hopes

From the very beginning the apostles warned that teachers would enter our churches with this or that version of an adjusted gospel. Not that such teachers would bear all the blametheir adjustments would find a ready market among the itching ears that demanded them.

Yet God in his grace has granted that most of us minister together for the gospel so that we might encourage one another to stand for an unadjusted gospel. It is this goal that brought the conference together in 2010 and that I have been privileged to watch in an increasing number of ministers today, especially in the younger generation represented at the various Together for the Gospel conferences and other gospel-centered conferences like it.

Let me point to four things in particular that I have observed and that I pray will continue to flourish. First, I have been grateful to see a commitment to truth among a growing generation of ministers. More and more young pastors recognize that truth, doctrine, and theology matter. Their ministerial lives testify to this.

Ironically, you see this even among points of disagreement. People often ask what I think about Mark Devers teasing me about the sin of infant of baptism. I smile inside whenever I get this query. Mark is absolutely, deadly serious about being biblical in his practice of baptism. This is not teasing that you are seeing. You havent been there at night when hes gone after me! And even though Mark thinks (he would say knows) Im wrong, I love him for it. And I do so not in spite of our difference on baptism but (at least in part) because of it. I love him because he cares about the truth, and he loves me enough to challenge me about it, and because he also loves me enough to forbear with me in what he considers a not insignificant error.

It seems that I have begun to see more of this posture among young ministers in our day. Some still mistakenly decide that secondary matters are unimportant matters, especially if they pertain to ecclesiology. But the unity that results from this type of calculus is, We stand together because our differences dont matter that much. It is a shallow and shortsighted unity. One of the things I love about the generation of ministers represented at Together for the Gospel is that they know better. Everyone at the T4G conferences, I think, has been encouraged to look out and know that the crowd represents a variety of fellowships and denominational settings across which there is typically minimal interaction: fundamentalists, Sovereign Grace, Presbyterians (of various ilk, mainline and otherwise), Acts29, Methodists, Mennonites, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Bible church independents, Southern Baptists, Anglicans, Congregationalists, and more. In spite of our differences on secondary matters, many of us have discovered a unity not because the truth doesnt matter or because we have deemed important things secondary, but because we share profound things in common and love one another. So even though we disagree about important things, we rejoice in one another and in the shared theological commitments we hold.